Layman's questions regarding Measurement Problem

Not sure if anyone will be able to answer these questions but it would be good if someone would give it a shot.

A friend recently explained the measurement problem to me and i thought of a few questions which he was not able to answer.

A) Do animals count as observers, and can they cause wave function collapse?

B) If i were in the same room as the experiment while observing the electrons via an observation device then as i understand it the wave function collapse will occur. But, what would happen if i were one the other side of the planet, viewing the experiment through via data stream?

C) If i am controlling the experiment but not observing observing it, will the wave function collapse occur?

D) If a computer program that was sentient observed the experiment, would the collapse occur? I know that nobody actually knows the answer to this but some theories would be great.

Thank you in advance guys.

Sorry if these questions are lame but this has really intrigued me and i can't seem to find answers to my questions due to the fact that most papers i find on the subject are written in what may as well be Greek to me.

There have been no definite experiments done to rule out explanations on how collapse occurs. It MAY be animals collapse the wave function, it MAY be our consciousness does. That's all we can say right now.

It may be animals, but I think it's highly unlikely because that gives special preference to things that, from nature's point of view, don't seem to be special. An electron is an electron, whether or not it is in an animal's brain. So, if it turned out that animals collapsed the wave function, that would be very bizarre, indeed, and there is certainly no reason to believe that that is the case. However, the phenomenon of consciousness is a mysterious one that seems, at least on the face of it, to be a manifestation of nature giving animals a preferred status, so I could be wrong.

For that matter, wave function collapse seems to me to be a mere procedure for predicting the results of experiments, with no clear relation to reality, as such. What is going on behind the scenes remains a mystery.

The point is that it is possible to consider a measurement as just time evolution, provided that there's some other collapse later on. So, one idea is that maybe the cut-off point where the "real" collapse happens is with conscious observers.

rpt - I'm not sure if I'd consider something published in the Journal of Cosmology reputable. At all.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that it requires a "consciousness" to collapse a wave-function. To me, that sounds more like pseudo-science than MWI. Photodiodes collapse wave functions, and unless your definition of consciousness is pretty broad, it's not going to include that.

The measurement problem is interesting, and I don't think it's solved by invoking consciousness.

Observation is not a matter of living things at all. In a quantum sense, think of observation more like 'interaction'. Atoms can interact with other atoms. Very simplistically, this is effectively an observation.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that it requires a "consciousness" to collapse a wave-function. To me, that sounds more like pseudo-science than MWI. Photodiodes collapse wave functions, and unless your definition of consciousness is pretty broad, it's not going to include that.

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I don't like the idea, myself, but see, for example Sudbury's book Quantum Mechanics and the Particles of Nature, Chapter 5. He mentions this idea there. You don't have to include photodiodes because, as I said, you can actually incorporate any measurement into Schrodinger evolution, as Sudbery explains in his book. But the catch is that it just pushes the problem somewhere else, rather than solving the problem. So, the idea was to push the problem into consciousness. Probably, whoever put forth this idea would admit that it was speculative, at best.

I don't THINK collapse has anything to do with consciousness, and there is no reason to believe it does, but it's a vague possibility.

I don't like the idea, myself, but see, for example Sudbury's book Quantum Mechanics and the Particles of Nature, Chapter 5. He mentions this idea there. You don't have to include photodiodes because, as I said, you can actually incorporate any measurement into Schrodinger evolution, as Sudbery explains in his book. But the catch is that it just pushes the problem somewhere else, rather than solving the problem. So, the idea was to push the problem into consciousness. Probably, whoever put forth this idea would admit that it was speculative, at best.

I don't THINK collapse has anything to do with consciousness, and there is no reason to believe it does, but it's a vague possibility.

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Wait, what? The entire point of the measurement problem is that it cannot be encoded into Schrodinger evolution! Do you have a paper on this subject?

If one goes back to Schrodinger's poor cat in the box, one can easily imagine putting the entire contraption in a sealed box with a camera that records whether the cat is alive or dead upon opening the inner box. But this just means there are two states inside the outer box - one where the box was opened and the camera imaged a live cat, and the other where the box was opened and the camera imaged a dead cat. You've collapsed a function but you've just pushed the problem outward one box.

You could observe the experiment, check the camera recording, which would collapse it into one state or the other - but what if someone put you and the contraption in a box and did not observe you? There'd be one state where you saw a camera that detected a dead cat, and another state where you didn't. It wouldn't collapse until you were let out of the box and observed.

Well, maybe I will go check it out for you, and post when I have it figured out. It's been a while since I have thought about it.

Roughly, you consider the measuring device as some huge quantum mechanical system.

I'll have to post about it later when I have time to work it out/look it up. There must be some old papers that discuss these things. The fact that it is in a book doesn't really matter. He proves what he proves.

If one goes back to Schrodinger's poor cat in the box, one can easily imagine putting the entire contraption in a sealed box with a camera that records whether the cat is alive or dead upon opening the inner box. But this just means there are two states inside the outer box - one where the box was opened and the camera imaged a live cat, and the other where the box was opened and the camera imaged a dead cat. You've collapsed a function but you've just pushed the problem outward one box.

You could observe the experiment, check the camera recording, which would collapse it into one state of the other, but what if someone put you and the contraption in a box and did not observe you? There'd be one state where you saw a camera that detected a dead cat, and another state where you didn't. It wouldn't collapse until you were let out of the box and observed.